


Is It Just Me?

by lostonplanetyou



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Drug Use, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friendship/Love, JJ (Outer Banks) Deserves Better, Lots of Angst Actually, OBX, Physical Abuse, Slow Burn, again jj needs someone to take care of him, i must stress the AU, lots of changes in relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:46:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostonplanetyou/pseuds/lostonplanetyou
Summary: OBX au. After his father accepts the job as head of maintenance at Kildare Island Academy, JJ Maybank, born and raised Pogue, finds himself in the middle an unfamiliar place where it's Kooks galore. As he tries desperately to hide the truth of his enrollment and his father, he also navigates the uncharted waters of high society in the Outer Banks.Turns out, things aren't that much different from his old school. Aside from the uniforms. Boys are still boys, and JJ has always attracted trouble on and off the lacrosse field; relationships come and go faster than his father's stash of beer; he still sucks at math and needs a kid named Pope to tutor him in physics; and he can't seem to keep his hands off of his Spanish partner, who also happens to be his lacrosse captain's girlfriend.Oh, and did he mention that dead kid may have been his fault?Yeah! Just regular high school things.
Relationships: JJ (Outer Banks)/Original Female Character(s), JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara/Pope (Outer Banks), Rafe Cameron/Original Female Character(s), Sarah Cameron/John B. Routledge
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Is It Just Me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title inspired by Sasha Sloan's song.

“Welcome back, students, faculty and staff, for another great year here at Kildare Island Academy!”

The morning announcements blared from every speaker inside and outside of the school; eight minutes still remained before the fall semester actually began, but JJ Maybank watched as several students raced across the campus’ manicured lawns to their respectable classes. He didn’t recognize a single person.

JJ, unlike his brand new classmates, was still sitting leisurely in the passenger seat of his dad’s car. He’d been parked in front of what he liked to call the “Kook Academy” for the last two hours, but that didn’t mean he was in a hurry to begin his junior year of high school at one of the places he formerly thought he’d never be caught dead at.

His father, running on a very rare and strange fatherly vibe, had insisted on driving him to school instead of JJ taking his dirt bike. He had shaken him awake before the sun was even up.

“Come on,” Luke said, scrounging up a pathetic excuse for a smile, “for old time’s sake. It’ll be like we used to when you were a kid. Except without you crying and taking fifteen minutes just to pull off of my leg.”

Sleep in his eyes, JJ hadn’t known what to say to that, so he just stared. He knew there wasn’t a single memory of a scene like that lurking in any corner of his brain.

But nevertheless, he agreed to his father’s wish, cautious but just curious enough to play along with Luke’s odd moment of affection. JJ knew it wouldn’t last forever, but even the most sane of desert-wanderers fell into the trap of a mirage when they were thirsty enough -- and despite years of fighting childhood dependency, loneliness and masochistic tendencies to believe Luke was ever capable of reform, JJ was still thirsty for a taste of a normal father-son relationship, however temporary. 

So that meant arriving at the KIA well before everyone else showed up. See, the reason JJ was even there in the first place was because of Luke’s new job -- head of maintenance at the Academy. That meant free tuition for JJ, even a free tutor, if it came down to it, and a glimmer of hope at a scholarship; but it also meant stuffy uniforms, above average grades, and some major adjustment to his moral compass.

JJ pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. Say that to the burning joint wedged between his fingers.

He desperately wished to crack a window, for the sun was now high in the sky and heating the car up like an oven, but he couldn’t risk any wisp of smoke in the air to lead back to him. Not for his own sake, though; JJ didn’t particularly care if he were expelled from this school for life, but something about this hell-hole gave him the impression Luke would end up paying the price for his mistake as well.

And this was the first steady job in months Luke had managed to snag without lying heavily on his resume or bribing a higher-up. Hell, this was the first job in months Luke had that was legal.

JJ never quite understood the flashes of protectiveness he had for his undeserving father, but all the same, he dropped the remainder of the joint on the floor of the car, stamping it out like all the ironic joints Luke’s dropped down there before him. 

With a sigh, he steps out of the car. He grabs his backpack and his ridiculous navy blue blazer out of the back seat and tosses both over his shoulder. 

Traffic on the campus grounds had dwindled, but a few stragglers still hovered around the marble fountain in the middle of the quad. As JJ approached, he eyed them behind his sunglasses: a small girl with sand-colored hair held hands with a smiling boy with a head of unruly brown curls; they spoke to another boy who was pulling on his jacket and trying to fix his tie at the same time. Something about this trio screamed ‘rich’ to JJ, and, finding himself rather forcefully uninterested, he turned away.

Just in time to find himself barely missing the little boy sprinting past him. He stepped back just in time. “Whoa! Hey!” 

The little boy didn’t seem to have heard him; he kept running straight towards the group of three JJ had been observing before, laughing. The boy was undoubtedly from the sister elementary school located on the opposite side of the grounds, but that was a good distance from where they were now. 

“Matty! Get back here, you little shit!”

JJ turned just in time again before a second person crashed into him. This time, it was a girl. Her hair was dark, pulled back in a high ponytail with an abundant display of flyaways that did nothing to ease the haggard look on her face. She clutched a heavy stack of books in her arms yet ran with ease at a pace that suggested this wasn’t the first time she had chased after the boy.

“Fuck, come on, dude -- I need to be in class,” she whined as she flew past JJ. A cloud of papers streamed behind her, and JJ noticed the girl’s skirt riding up as she ran, exposing just the very bottom of a well-sculpted and most certainly thong-wearing ass.

JJ watched as the little boy ran a lap around the fountain, then twisted his way through the girl and two boys standing by it. He used the taller of the two boys, the one with the curly hair, as a human shield as the dark-haired girl caught up to him. She dropped her books unceremoniously on the sidewalk and tried to snatch at the little boy’s wrist. The trio laughed loudly as he bobbed and weaved out of her reach. 

“Matt!”

The warning bell, which was actually a pretentious snippet of some piece of classical music tinkling from the speakers, cut JJ’s mild amusement short, and he had no choice but to turn his back to the scene in front of him. He could still hear the group’s laughter as he made his way over to building four. 

Science. For juniors, it happened to be physics. JJ didn’t know much about it, and he had a sinking feeling there wouldn’t be any surfing metaphors to help him out. 

Walking into the classroom, he was immediately hit with the buzzing sound of kids reunited after a summer holiday apart. No one even looked up at him. All of the seats were almost filled, save for a few in the back; he slunk down into the one closest to the door just as the teacher stood from her desk.

“Alright, guys. Settle down, settle down. I’m Ms. Hanaway and I’ll be your Intro to Physics teacher this year…”

\---------------------------------------------

The rest of the day seemed to move at the speed of a snail. Or maybe that was a side effect of his morning blunt. Either way, JJ stumbled from science to history to English over the course of what felt like a year. By the time the bell signaled for lunch, he had almost convinced himself time was moving backwards.

Each class had jumped into the curriculum right away, much to his disappointment. Whatever happened to first day introductions? He’d even take a fucking _icebreaker_ over writing notes on velocity, World War I, and the proper time for Oxford commas until his hand cramped.

Lunch was his lone lifesaver in a sea of academics his old public school had never prepared him for. He traipsed across the grounds under the stifling heat of the sun back towards his father’s car; he had half a mind to hotwire the oldsmobile and take off, but the wrath of his father when he found out JJ skipped was unprecedented -- and not something he was willing to risk experiencing. Instead, he pulled the measly half sandwich and full bag of Doritos from his backpack and kicked back in the passenger seat again. With one eye on the students milling about the parking lot (apparently leaving campus for lunch was a privilege the school trusted their students not to abuse), he snaked another joint from the center console and lit up.

The staff parking lot was far enough away to not put him at the center of the flow of students, but JJ internally cringed at the thought of anyone catching him eating alone in a car. But wandering around the lunchroom until he found an empty table to sit at seemed far worse. 

He supposed he could’ve tried finding Trevor -- his orientation guide he met with last week. JJ had spotted him earlier as they passed each other in the hall of building two. Trevor, while sporting several Star Wars buttons on his Jansport and not bothering to untuck the bottom of his pleated khakis from his socks, seemed cool enough; he had told JJ about the tryouts for the fall lacrosse team, as well as the debate team tryouts, the Honors Society sign-up date, and the one computer in the media center that had a faulty firewall and allowed a fifteen-minute access to PornHub. 

JJ smirked and took a drag. Yeah, Trevor didn’t seem so bad. 

Unlike the first half of the day, the lunch hour rushed by. JJ spent the majority of the time on his phone, messaging his friends back at Outer Banks High about the nonsensical grandiosity of the school. He FaceTimed Sam, who was already finished with her classes for the day over at UNC. Although she had left only a week ago, he found himself missing her painfully, and by the time their call ended, he felt bitter, lonely and even a little jealous.

Why couldn’t he be nineteen and free and _miles away from this place_ like her? 

“I miss you,” he had murmured, watching as the beautiful blonde hit the bong he gave her for their three month anniversary. She smiled and exhaled a cloud in the shape of a perfect ‘O’. 

“I miss you, too” she rasped in her low voice. She settled down on the couch in her apartment, ready for an afternoon nap, while he was about to be subjected to another two and a half hours of classes he didn’t understand. “You’re still coming to visit this weekend, right?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but a door on Sam’s end of the phone slammed shut and a shrill voice screamed, “Hey! Party at Pike tonight!”

She had shot him an apologetic look then hung up with a hasty but sweet goodbye. He tossed his phone onto the driver’s seat beside him, sighing. The cons of dating an older woman. 

JJ used the remaining minutes of his lunch to summon up the strength to finish his first day at the Kook Academy, but it wasn’t without difficulty. He stared down at his khakis that were identical to every other boy’s, although JJ’s boasted of ash stains to set him apart from the rest. But that was it. Other than that, he was another tie-wearing pawn in the elitists’ game of climbing the ladder to high society. He felt somewhat sick wearing this costume that represented the opposite side of Kildare Island that he came from. He wondered, with a nervous clench of his stomach, how long it would take before the rest of his classmates realized he was a fraud.

It wasn’t like he could’ve said no to going there, though. HIs dad had been so proud, so happy, albeit drunk, when he announced he had secured a career as head of maintenance at KIA and a position for JJ at a school that could offer him “more than I was ever offered,” as his dad so bitterly put it.

And JJ would be a fool to turn it down. Luke’s words were true. As a Maybank, his options were limited for life beyond graduation, but this stint in the local private school might be a door opening into something more than a life of mechanical work and _hush-hush_ side jobs.

He allowed himself to briefly contemplate the opportunities the Kook Academy might present to him, but he was interrupted by the screeching of tires.

In the midst of all the students returning to school, a silver Jeep came to an abrupt stop in a front row handicap parking spot. A tall boy stepped out gracefully. He slicked a hand over his brown hair and straightened his rather crooked tie; his shirt was rumpled and halfway untucked. JJ smirked. He recognized that rumpled look anywhere: illegal-parking Jeep-boy here just got some.

Good to know things weren’t completely different at this new high school.

And then there she was, the same girl from before -- the dark-haired, toned-ass, sailor mouth girl.

She emerged from the other side of the vehicle, looking tiny beside it and beside the boy. While she seemed more put together than him, JJ could spot the flushed cheeks from across the lot, and her already mussed up ponytail was hanging limply down her back. She held out her hand for the boy and he took it without a word; neither of them even looked at each other as they set off across the quad, and not a person around them seemed to notice their exchange. But JJ did.

He emerged from Luke’s car a few minutes later, after there wasn’t a soul in sight in the parking lot. He knew he was risking being late to math (fucking precalc, bro), but his want to stay in the car had fought to overpower his resolve for much longer than he had anticipated. 

Math went the same as the rest -- too many notes for his brain to process after three long months of using as little of his brain as possible. But he ended up making conversation with a guy he recognized from the Boneyard parties, Brian; he even smiled once or twice at Brian’s biased rundown of the Academy’s “absolute trash” lacrosse team before remembering where he was. Much to JJ’s surprised relief, Brian was in JJ’s next class -- Spanish.

“I mean, there’s Topper. He’s not bad, I guess, but he doesn’t have much of a drive and kind of pussies out whenever he’s rushed by D-men. Now, John B’s good. Big. Strong. Not particularly fast, though, so we keep him around the goal and he does a decent job. I think he’s got a couple schools looking at him, can’t think which ones, though. Fuck.”

It’s the first moment of familiarity JJ’s had all day: walking with an acquaintance to his next class, talking about the one sport he’s ever had a passion for. It calmed him down better than both of those joints had.

In Spanish, Brian was greeted by almost everyone, and the reality of his situation settled back in for JJ. He slid into another seat towards the back, and although Brian followed, his attention laid elsewhere -- but not for long.

“ _Silencio, clase_ ,” the teacher called out, entering the room. She wrote ‘Sra. Gomez’ on the whiteboard at the front of the room before moving to her computer. A projector screen slid down from the ceiling and a PowerPoint came to life in front of the class. “ _Bienvenidos a la clase de español cuatro para estudiantes intermedios_.”

JJ almost laughed at the thought of him in an advanced class, but a quick glance around the room at some of his classmates’ confused expressions had him second-guessing himself.

At least he understood the teacher.

“This year,” Sra. Gomez began in English, “we will be covering the cultures of the different Spanish-speaking countries and how this distinguishes their Spanish from--”

The door opened quietly beside JJ, but everyone heard it. For the third time that day, JJ was looking at the girl from before: dark-haired, great-ass, filthy-mouthed, and now afternoon-delight-seeking girl. She was wide-eyed and sheepish and tiptoed into the nearest vacant seat as if she hadn’t disrupted the whole class. However, to her favor, Sra. Gomez resumed without comment.

“--their Spanish from the others. I think it’s not too early to mention that there will be a project due at the end of this semester on a different Spanish-speaking country, which will be randomly assigned to you and a partner.”

Soft groans erupted around JJ, Brian included; the only one who didn’t seem to have a problem with the assignment was the girl.

“You will need to research the culture of your country thoroughly and give a presentation on what about their culture sets them apart from the others. And,” she said loudly over another chorus of groans, “it will be worth half of your semester grade.”

JJ’s stomach did a somersault.

“ _¡A ver!_ You might not like me for this, but why not make it easier for all of you and give you your partners now? And, hey, why don’t we assign you as desk partners, too?”

The collective reply from the class confirmed they did not like her for it. A couple rows up, the girl still showed no sign of even hearing the teacher or her classmates. She had positioned her notebook to hide anyone in front of her from seeing her phone in her lap, but JJ could see her typing furiously on the screen. 

Brian nudged him. “Hey, I can probably see if Gomez will let us partner up -- since you’re new and all and don’t know anyone--”

Sra. Gomez cleared her throat and began reading off a list from her computer screen. “First dynamic duo of the day is...Brian Howler and Ava Marsh.”

Brian swore under his breath and shot a guilty look JJ’s way; JJ just shrugged in response. He wasn’t shy -- he wasn’t sure why Brian felt compelled to babysit him -- and he knew it would happen sooner or later on his first day. Truthfully, the only thing holding him back from being more social today was his longing for his friends, for Sam, and the homesickness he felt for his old school; all things that would be easier to deal with as time went on. Oh, and he also was afraid of his father popping up out of nowhere and announcing to everyone within range that he was the maintenance man’s son.

“Then we have Grace Ainswell and Dakota Hewing…”

The list continued. JJ had yet to hear his name. 

“Margaret Jones and...Julius Maybank.”

Oh, good fucking God. But he didn’t have time to correct the teacher for using his real name. Dark-haired, toned-ass, sailor-mouth, sexytime-siesta girl had looked up from her phone and turned toward him. JJ realized her eyes were bright. An ambiguous gray color. And they were trained on him.

**Author's Note:**

> i do not know lacrosse very well so bear with me haha. please let me know what you think! keep in mind this story is VERY au and has nothing to do with season one's plot line. just using and abusing the characters the show gave me :)


End file.
